If you have a food processor and five minutes you can make your own rich peanut butter. In addition to no preservatives you can also add a variety of flavorings to customize to your taste.

As healthy living weblog Loves Veggies and Yoga points out, freshly-made peanut butter compared to the stuff you get on grocery shelves is about as different as an artisan chocolate to your standard Hershey's milk chocolate. There's nothing wrong with either, but the extra effort or investment is rewarded with better quality and flavor. All you need to do to make your own is add 16 ounces of roasted peanuts to your food processor and let it run for around five minutes until it reaches the desired consistency. You may have to pause a few times to scrape down the sides of the container if necessary. The peanuts will go from crushed to powdered into a paste and then a "dough ball" before it breaks back down into peanut butter.

For an easy flavor change you can use honey-roasted or spicy peanuts but seasonings such as cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg, vanilla extract, or maybe even a splash of a cordial such as Kahlua or Baileys Irish Cream give an almost limitless palette to your uses for peanut butter.